A wide variety of communication forms are available to users. For example, in a typical office environment, a user may be contacted by telephone, email, instant messages, and messages left in various mailboxes. In order to better manage their time, users need to restrict which communications they receive and when they receive communications.
Conventional solutions for managing a user's availability through different communication streams include filters to block unwanted communications. However, such filters are typically binary in nature. For instance, a telephone can be placed in a do not disturb setting, according to which all incoming calls will be routed to voice mail. As yet another example, in connection with instant messaging, a user can be either present in the system or not. As still another example, a communications device or application associated with a communications channel can be off or on. Accordingly, conventional systems allow a user to either enable all communications using a selected communications channel, or disable all such communications.
As a further example, messages from specific senders can be blocked or routed to alternate mailboxes using mail delivery options provided as part of conventional email systems. Even in connection with systems that allow selective filtering, enabling or disabling the filter is a cumbersome process that is not practical to frequently reconfigure, for example in response to changes in the user's environment that may occur during the course of a day.
Accordingly, conventional communications systems must be administered individually. In addition, such systems implement static filters or blocking mechanisms. That is, changes to filter or blocking parameters are only made in response to direct user intervention. Accordingly, manipulation of available filter mechanisms in response to changes in a user's activities are impractical or impossible. For example, managing a number of communication channels to provide desired levels of accessibility in response to whether the user is in a meeting, on a phone call, needing quiet time, or being completely available, has been impractical or impossible. Such systems have also been limited in their ability to allow only communications from selected senders to pass while blocking communications from other senders.